I watched an unlikely baseball team, the Tampa Bay Rays, win the 7th and final game of their play-off with the Boston Red Sox tonight. I think they were fairly lucky. But baseball is that way. So the Rays go from last place to first place in the American League to face the Philadelphia Phillies, another unlikely team, in the World Series of 2008.
This takes me back to 1950 when the Phillies were the unlikely winners of the National League pennant. They faced the usual winners in the American League, the hated New York Yankees. I was 10 years old and had lied my way into a Milwaukee Sentinel paper route, so I had a few dollars in my pocket in those days: maybe $30 a month, supposedly to be used to get badly needed orthodontic work. I guess the dentists were a little cheaper in those days.
That was the year that Murphy Dornfeld, the only barber in the village of Hustisford, and the proud owner of one of about a half-dozen TV sets in the village, moved his television set from the apartment above to the shop below, somehow balancing the giant piece of furniture with a probable 10 inch black and white screen on the row of chairs that the customers and kibitzers normally sat in. I’m not sure who was brave enough to get a haircut while the games were being televised as Murphy was an excitable guy. A bullshitter too. But he knew more about baseball than I did.
When I suggested that I would bet $1 on the first game, with Jim Konstanty on the mound for the Phillies against Vic Raaschi for the Yankees, he had no trouble welcoming a mark into his shop. For some reason or other the Phillies ace, Robin Roberts, was side-lined until game 2. [When I look it up they said he had done a lot of pitching in the last week of the regular season. Even so, Konstanty pitched a brilliant 4 hitter and lost 1-0, a heart breaker for the anti-New York crowd in rural Wisconsin. I had a fairly unsophisticated view of statistics in those days, so I felt certain that a double or nothing bet on game 2 was a sure thing, especially with Roberts going against Allie Reynolds for the Yankees. That was $2 on a game that was tied 1-1 after nine innings and won by Joe Dimaggio with a home run in the 10th. He made it look easy hitting too.
In keeping with my view of statistics I naturally doubled my bet with Murphy the barber once again. That was $4 on game 3. A long shot, Ken Heintzelman, started for the Phillies against Eddie Lopat for the Yankees. The Phillies and Heintzelman led 2-1 into the 8th inning (they didn’t use as many relievers in those days), got two outs, and then walked 3 straight batters, Konstanty comes in and the shortstop, Hamner, makes an error allowing the tying run to score. And then Gerry Coleman, the 2nd baseman hits a homer in the ninth to win the 3rd game in a row for the Yankees.
So, in desperation, and feeling sure that the baseball gods and the mathematical gods would bail me out, I doubled my bet once more on the 4th game. That was $8, about 30% of my monthly income in those days, on one game, or a total of $15 for the whole Series, half my monthly income. Of course, the fact that I was a 10 year old kid didn’t mean anything to Murphy. I paid off; and as soon as another barber opened a shop I stopped going to Murphy for my haircuts. Whitey Ford was pitching for the Yankees and should have won 5-0 but Gene Woodling dropped a flyball in left field and two runners scored for the Phillies but they still lost 5-2. Ever since I’ve been wary of statistical arguments that you can’t see with your eyes on the data.
No comments:
Post a Comment